Plans for the South Bronx Greenway call for the fence at the end of 132nd Street to come down and the rotting pier to be replaced by a small park.Photo by Sarah Trefethen

South Bronx Greenway to bring access to waterfront

By Sarah Trefethen
sarah.trefethen@motthavenherald.com

It’s a sunny spring afternoon, and a handful of residents are spending time on the stoop of Jasmine Court, on the corner of 138th Street and Bruckner Boulevard. Trucks rumble on and off the expressway. Pedestrians hurry past.

Laura Barksdale, 52, says she sits outside because she likes to watch the people go by. But she acknowledges Port Morris is not the most comfortable place to hang out outdoors.

“There’s nowhere to relax and sit around,” she said. “There’s nowhere to go.”

The industrial area at the borough’s southernmost tip is a place of trucks, factories and fumes, with little to offer humans who travel by foot or by bike, or want to sit a spell. But the proposed South Bronx Greenway could bring tree-lined paths and waterfront parks to Port Morris’ lifeless streets.

Work is already underway on the Randall’s Island Connector, the first step in implementing an ambitious plan that could eventually lace much of the South Bronx with safe and attractive places to exercise and enjoy the outdoors.

Once the Randall’s Island Connector is built, the plan calls for trees to be planted along Willow and Locust Avenues and 138th Street. Cyclists will get their own lane, protected from trucks by a curb.

Right now, the streets leading to the East River shore end in barbed-wire fences. The plan calls for access to the river from 132nd and 134th streets, where small waterfront parks will be built.

Plans for the South Bronx Greenway originated in Hunts Point a dozen years ago, when Majora Carter, then a program associate at The Point Community Development Corporation, wrote a $1.25 million grant proposal to make the waterfront more accessible.

Two new waterfront parks opened in Hunts Point in 2006, but the remainder of the plan remained on paper until this spring, when Mayor Bloomberg announced that $22 million in federal stimulus money would be used to move the greenway from the drawing board to reality.

Completion of the greenway would make it possible for walkers or cyclists to take a trail from Port Morris to Hunts Point Riverside Park, and to connect there with the Bronx River Greenway, leading all the way to Westchester.

“The greenway will offer a community that has had the least amount of park space per resident, compared to the rest of the city of New York, some breathing room,” said Miquela Craytor, executive director of Sustainable South Bronx.

Jasmine Court, an assisted living facility for the formerly homeless, is a rare place in Port Morris where people actually live. But the Port Morris section of the greenway will also benefit the tens of thousands people living nearby in Mott Haven, and waterfront enthusiasts from even further afield.

Forty-year-old Ozzie Morales, a delivery driver from East Elmhurst, likes to stop his van at the fence at the end of 134th Street and enjoy the view.

“I think it would be really, really great,” he said when told about the proposed greenway. “It’s a beautiful view, and this is wasted land. It has so much potential. I could see seating here, and a promenade, like they did on the West Side in the 20’s.”

There are also thousands of people with jobs in Port Morris. Vanessa Lloyd, 18, is a clerical worker at the World Vision distribution center in Port Morris. She thinks trees and bike paths would make the neighborhood a better place to work.

“We need something like that to make it look lively. To have people be able to ride their bikes instead of walking in all this trash,” she said. “It’d be nice to have some healthiness around.”

One hundred trees along the Grand Concourse are part of the Tree Museum, a summer-long public art project to celebrate the street's 100th anniversary. Bronx student James Kane of All Hallows High School narrates for this amur corktree in Joyce Kilmer Park.

The Grand Concourse, the iconic boulevard that stretches along four miles of the Bronx, has 100 years of stories to tell. This summer and fall, Bronx residents are lending their voices to share those stories—through the trees that line the street’s parks and sidewalks.

The Tree Museum is the creation of Irish artist Katie Holten, who was commissioned to create a work of public art to celebrate this year’s 100^th anniversary of the Grand Concourse.

From 138th street to Mosholu Parkway, 100 trees tell their stories. Green discs on the sidewalk bearing the Tree Museum logo identify the trees and offer a phone number that visitors can call, either from home or from their mobile phones, to hear a short audio clip about the Bronx narrated by people who live and work in the community.

“It’s kind of like an Easter egg hunt,” Holten said of the markers scattered along the Concourse.

Call tree number 6, a honey locust in front of the post office at 588 Grand Concourse, and you’ll hear community activist Majora Carter talk about growing up in the Bronx. Harry Bubbins, director of the local environmental group Friends of Brook Park, narrates for tree number 13, an American elm at the entrance to Franz Siegel Park.

Call this tree outside the post office at 588 Grand Concourse to hear Majora Carter, the founder of Sustainable South Bronx, talk about growing up in the South Bronx.

Bronx Borough Historian Lloyd Ultan, who participated in the project, said he thinks using trees is an appropriate way to celebrate the street’s centennial.

“The Grand Concourse is noted for the fact that it’s tree-lined,” he said. “That’s one of the things that makes the Grand Concourse outstanding, so it made a great deal of sense.”

Ultan made recordings for seven different trees along the Concourse, offering historical facts and anecdotes about the street.

Opened to traffic in November of 1909, the Concourse was modeled after the Champs Elysees in Paris, and soon came to mark achievement in the borough, Ultan said.

“The Grand Concourse in the Bronx was the equivalent of 5th Avenue and Park Avenue in Manhattan,” he explained. “It was a symbol that you had made it.”

Holten said she knew very little about the area when she launched the project in 2007.

“I spent about two months researching and spending as much time as possible on the Concourse,” she said.  “I kind of fell in love with it.”

Organized by the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Wave Hill and the Department of Parks and Recreation, The Tree Museum debuted on June 21st and will run until Oct. 12th.

The audio guide is available by calling (718) 408-2501 and entering the extension for any tree, numbered 1 to 100. More information, including a map of the project, can be found at www.treemuseum.org.

The route of the South Bronx Greenway and connections to it.

The greenway will follow the waterfront in Hunts Point and Port Morris, connecting to the soon-to-be-built Randall’s Island bridge, Barretto Point Park with its floating swimming pool, a planned park near the Fulton Fish Market and Hunts Point Riverside Park. Devised by local community groups, the greenway plan was embraced by the city in 2006, when Bloomberg formally unveiled the master plan.

The plan’s proponents see the greenway not only as a way to reclaim the waterfront and make their communities more attractive, but as a way to improve the health of residents in neighborhoods where diabetes and heart disease are epidemics.

They hope the Greenway will encourage residents to walk and bicycle for exercise. “One reason people struggle with obesity in the South Bronx is the lack of opportunity to exercise safely outdoors,” argues Sustainable South Bronx, which spearheaded the planning for the trail. People in Mott Haven and Hunts Point don’t feel safe outside, said Miquela Craytor, the executive director of Sustainable South Bronx. “We want to create a safe way to be active.”

Majora Carter, Craytor’s predecessor as head of Sustainable South Bronx, played a leading role in conceiving the Greenway and pressing the city to build it. Carter obtained a $1.25 million federal transportation grant and enlisted The Point Community Development Corporation and the city’s Economic Development Corporation to join in the study that produced the trail’s design.

“In 1997, The Point came to my office requesting my support for the creation of a ‘green necklace’ around the Hunts Point and Port Morris neighborhoods, Rep. Jose Serrano recalled when the master plan was unveiled. “At the time, the concept of a ‘South Bronx Greenway’ seemed outlandish to many,” he continued, as he noted his own contribution to funding the plan.

Building the Greenway will be one of six projects citywide that will benefit from the federal stimulus program. The feds will provide a $22 million infusion of funds, nearly half the nearly $49 million needed to complete the project. “The federal stimulus dollars mean that we can move projects that would have been on the chopping block and get shovels in the ground quickly,” said the mayor.

Majora Carter speaking at last year's Earth Day celebration in Mott Haven

Plans had called for the academy to be located in the South Bronx

By Prakirti Nangia
news@motthavenherald.com

The city Department of Education has rejected a proposal to create a high school based on the ideas of the founder of Sustainable South Bronx and devoted to training students for jobs that can improve the environment.

The Majora Carter Achievement Academy was the brainchild of its namesake, the former executive director of the environmental justice organization. More than two years in the making, the proposal was developed by Stephen Ritz, an award-winning teacher and coordinator of student affairs at the Millennium Art Academy in the East Bronx.

It had won letters of support from Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, Jr., Baruch College, Mothers on the Move, the Bronx River Alliance and even former President Bill Clinton, among others, but in December, the education department dropped it from the list of 100 applicants whose ideas for new schools it was considering.

Plans called for the academy to be located in the South Bronx and be open to all New York City students. Ritz said sites in and near Hunts Point were among those under consideration.

Curriculum choices for students included classes in installing green roofs, restoring wetlands and identifying plants, as well as classes emphasizing hazardous waste cleanup, auto shop safety and engine performance. Students would graduate with training certificates in the specialty of their choice.

The South Bronx would serve as a real-life classroom, according to the proposal. Majora Carter Academy students would be paired with community organizations to provide both work experience and engagement with urban and environmental issues.

The students were to have access to Sustainable South Bronx’s FabLab, the facility housed next door to Hunts Point Riverside Park designed by the Massachusetts Institute of Techonology to enable users to translate digital designs into physical reality.

They were also to be able to take part in Pratt Institute’s Design Incubator for Sustainable Innovation, a program that provides support and guidance to designers, artists and architects.

Ritz said Fortune 100 and 500 publishing and technology companies had pledged to provide internships and jobs for graduates.

Melody Meyer, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, said the Majora Carter Achievement Academy “will not open in September because it failed to meet our criteria,” which included “the academic merits of the proposal, and the ability of the people in the proposing team to lead a school that will successfully educate students.”

“The entire MCAA team is sad that, at this time, this great city is not interested in our ability to turn people previously thought of as ‘problems’ into heroes of green infrastructure,” Carter said in a statement.

Ritz said he was “appalled” at the city’s decision.

The education department invited about three-quarters of applicants to interviews about their proposals. The Majora Carter Achievement Academy was one of the few that was not, said Ritz.

He speculated that budget concerns, lack of space, or simply a “threatening” grassroots movement may have informed the city’s decision.

“The fact that we named it after Majora, while important to us, probably was a problem for DOE. We were told off the record that a different more palatable name would have gotten us in the door!” he said in an email.

“Sadly DOE and city politics have always had more to do with what happens than the best interests of children.”

Carter and Sustainable South Bronx have frequently clashed with the city over its decisions to build unwelcome facilities in poor neighborhoods. The organization was born from a battle to keep a waste transfer station out of Hunts Point; more recently Sustainable South Bronx has been outspoken in its opposition to building a jail.

But the city and the organization have also cooperated on such projects as the South Bronx Greenway, an idea first advanced by Carter.

Ritz said his team abandoned a similar proposal in its early stages two years ago because the Department of Education wanted the school to be built in Brooklyn. He and Carter insisted on the Bronx.

Damian Griffin, the education director at the Bronx River Alliance, said students in the South Bronx feel the “schools aren’t there for them. They are just some place to keep them.”

In its recommendation letter to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, the Bronx River Alliance supported the Majora Carter Achievement Academy because it felt there was a great need for “providing academic venues for those who do not fit into the traditional academic confines of the present.”

Kellie Terry-Sepulveda, executive managing director of The Point CDC, praised the grassroots nature of the school, saying, “Oftentimes we have millions of schools coming into our neighborhood and they’re not from our neighborhood. I’m all for community-based solutions.”
The proposal was in fact “an outgrowth of many years of community organizing,” said Ritz.

The idea for the school emerged from a belief that “privilege or zip code should not entitle you to a better education or limit your access,” Ritz said. It was all about “finding a sustainable opportunity indigenous to the community.”

Team MCAA is not yet giving up, said Ritz. It plans to reapply to the department next year and meanwhile is considering proposals from other South-Bronx based high schools that have invited the Academy to start a program on their campuses.

“I firmly believe that not now does not mean not ever,” said Ritz.